An Exploration Into The Translation Of English And Chinese Animal Idioms From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Idioms are the essence of language and the crystallization of human wisdom, with strong local characteristics and ethnic characteristics. Animal idioms, as an integral part of idioms, are usually concise and vivid, with strong cultural characteristics. Today, with the increasing frequence of the international communication, more and more scholars believe that translation activities are more a kind of cultural exchange than just language transfer. Thus, in such an international environment, how to make English and Chinese people understand each other's culture embodied in the language is one of the focuses in the translation field and one of the difficulties, too. With the help of the pioneers' translation theories and practical experience, the author would like to apply Reception Aesthetics, whose representatives are Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, to the translation of English and Chinese animal idioms, putting the reader's receptive ability in the first place. With a large number of examples relating to animal idioms, the author mainly discusses the enlightenment of Reception Aesthetics on the translation of animal idioms in the following three aspects:focusing on the reader's role and status; focusing on the shift of horizon of expectations; focusing on the reception and the cultural exchange. In the process, the author briefly analyzes the relationship between culture and translation, and then points out the difficulties of translation of animal idioms, to call the translator's attention to the recipient's status and role in order to ascertain the problems which should be paid attention to in the conversion process from the original to the translated version and find out their possible solutions.Compared with the previous studies which paid attention to the translatability of the original language and the readability of the translated version in the process of translation, with little attention to the reader's acceptability, this thesis is not only concerned with the fidelity of the translated version to the original, but also pays attention to the receptive effect of the target language readers, particularly the reader's response and the acceptance of the translated text. In the thesis, the application of Reception Aesthetics to the translation of animal idioms provides a new perspective for the translation of animal idioms. At the same time, it provides a reliable reference for further research on the animal idioms as well as the English and Chinese translation practice in the future.